Mohamed Kamer Nizamdeen was held in solitary confinement for a month on terror offences, only to be released after police admitted they'd arrested the wrong person.
It emerged the 25-year-old Muslim man's colleague had framed Kamer because he was jealous of his friendship with a young woman.
In his first in-depth interview since he was arrested, Kamer has told Hack what it was like the day his life suddenly changed. He went from holding down an ordinary office job to being a suspect in a police terror investigation, without access to a lawyer for five days. He went from a sharehouse to sitting in a cell next door to hardened criminals.
Having returned to Sri Lanka, he says the ordeal has ruined his life. Police have not apologised and maintain they were protecting the public.
The notebook
Mike Glending was at work on August 31, 2018, when he saw a photo of one of his former young interns accompanying the top news story. It said a budding IT business analyst, Mohamed Kamer Nizamdeen, had planned terror attacks like bombing the Sydney Harbour Bridge and killing the prime minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull. Mike took a screenshot of the article and sent it to his old team.
Despite the terrifying plans Mohamed — who was known to his friends as Kamer — was accused of creating, Mike was quick to jump to his defence. "I felt like it was a mistake for sure, I said that to quite a few people, that it definitely wasn't in his character. I knew the guy, he was never aggressive ... he was just a shy and friendly kid."
Kamer, who was 25 at the time of his arrest, had been working at the University of New South Wales's IT department. He had studied Commerce at the uni as an international student, built up a resume interning on the campus, and eventually got a job there as well. Kamer's colleagues, friends and family thought of him as a laid-back, friendly, caring person who loved to party and hang out with his big group of friends.
Kamer's mother and father had visited him in Sydney before his arrest.
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Crucial to the case that would eventually upend Kamer's life was an object that everyone has on their desks: an A4 notebook.
Kamer's had a yellow cover, and he would use it at work to write down notes and take to meetings. "It was general use for a notebook at work ... I didn't really pay much attention to it," he told Hack.
A month before his arrest, Kamer had flown to Sir Lanka for a family reunion. When he returned from overseas he didn't notice the notebook was missing. "I really didn't care. There wasn't anything that I felt should be important in that book. I just continued with my normal day-to-day stuff."
The arrest
On August 30, Kamer went out to lunch with his colleagues and on his way down from the 11th floor of the IT building, he noticed a man who kept looking at him. "There was this one guy, he was giving me a really weird look and he was on the phone, but he kept glancing at me a lot. I didn't pay much attention to it."
What happened next played out like a plot in a Hollywood movie.
"When we stepped out of the cafe, this bunch of people approached us and there was this lady in front and she asked me if my name was Mohamed Nizamdeen," Kamer said.
The detective asked if he had lost a notebook.
"I said, 'No, I can't remember'. And then she said, 'There has been a notebook found with your name on it, that has very threatening and alarming notes and we would like to get you down at the police station to ask you about that.'"
It turned out several people at the cafe including the man who had been on his phone and glancing at Kamer were undercover officers.
They arrested him using some of Australia's most serious anti-terrorism laws.
"I thought this was a university prank... like someone was doing a prank on YouTube or something like that. [The police] said, 'No, this is not a joke'."
The group of police walked Kamer through his office in front of his peers and co-workers to collect his belongings.
Kamer is charged with terror offences
When Kamer got to Maroubra Police Station in Sydney, he was shown copies of the notebook he hadn't realised had been missing from his desk. He said he was terrified by the murderous schemes written on the pages.
"There was stuff about harming people who I had worked with, people who had actually helped me at university," he said. "There was stuff about throwing acid on people's faces, there was stuff about blowing up the Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge."
"There was stuff about explosives, about guns, about ammunition, about training camps. It was absolute radical stuff, which a normal person like you and me would not know about unless we were actually read up on it."
Weeks later in court, it came out that police had interviewed Kamer for eight hours that day without a lawyer. No other evidence of extremism had emerged. Detectives charged Kamer with possessing a blueprint to target several "symbolic" Sydney locations.
Feeling confused and worried while being questioned in a police cell, Kamer was then refused a phone call to his parents to tell them what was going on. Police have said this is not unusual for people accused of terror offences.
Kamer's mother, Mona Nizamdeen, said she found out about her son's arrest through a friend.
"I told my husband ... my husband started bawling," she told Hack.
"I was under the impression that the child would be sent home. I didn't know he was going to be charged on this flimsy evidence."
Mona desperately called the police station to get in touch with her son. However, she said she was only put through to Kamer a full day after his arrest.
Kamer said: "I remember dad was crying on the phone and then my mum took it and told me, 'Answer all the questions... say whatever you have to say and then just come home.'"
"That was the last time I heard her for a good month."
The arrest becomes the big news story
The arrest of a Muslim man, accused of planning a terror attack on some of Australia's most prominent landmarks, is a news story that writes itself.
On August 31, 2018 — the day Kamer's former colleague Mike Glending read about the arrest — police fronted a pack of reporters and news cameras to say how serious the plans in Kamer's notebook were. It was the day's major story.
"The investigation started with us being handed the notebook by an employee of the university," the Australian Federal Police's Michael McTiernhan told journalists that day. "Charges against him are serious and significant and shouldn't be underestimated."
The police said Kamer appeared to be an affiliate of Islamic State, despite never charging him with being a member of a terror organisation. Officers reassured the publiche was never capable of actually carrying out the attacks detailed in his notebook.
Kamer's photo was on the front page of the Daily Telegraph, wearing a middle eastern head dress with the headline, "Poster Boy For Terrorism".
The front page of the Daily Telegraph the day after Kamer was charged.
Politicians like One Nation's Mark Latham and Fraser Anning tweeted about Kamer as though he was already guilty of the crime. "Try avoiding Mohamed Nizamdeen and any of his mates ... How reassuring that the UNSW Hero of the Week, Mohamed Nizamdeen, was plotting to kill senior Federal MPs," Mark Latham's tweet read. "Our universities have become dangerous places in many respects."
Scott Morrison, who had just replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister, praised the police's work in arresting Kamer.
"This is another example of how our policies, our support to keep Australians safe, continues to work," he said.
Four weeks in solitary confinement
Kamer was put in solitary confinement at Goulburn Correctional Centre — a supermax prison where people accused of some of Australia's worst murders and terror plots were serving their sentences. The country's most notorious serial killer, Ivan Milat, was living out his last few months in one of Kamer's neighbouring cells.
"I was by myself the whole time and there was very minimal human contact ... It was only with the guards when they came around for food," Kamer said. "I asked for books, obviously to pass the time, and I remember that was the time I prayed a lot to God. I never prayed so much in my life."
Kamer's parents said they were struggling to understand why their son — someone they said would break up disagreements between friends rather than start them — had been jailed for plotting a terror attack.
"For one month, I was not able to speak to my child. One month, I was not able to see my child's face," Mona said. "Can you imagine how we feel? I was broken. I'm broken. I'm broken because Kamer is a very good child."
A protest in Sri Lanka for Kamer's release.
Dr Vicki Sentas, a senior lecturer at UNSW's law faculty who researches criminalisation and radicalisation in Australia, said people charged with terror offences are all treated harshly, even if they're not capable of carrying out a terror attack.
"One of the key problems with imprisonment for terrorism offences on bail before a person has been found guilty is this classification of being put in maximum security and solitary confinement, and that seems to be a one size fits all," she said.
"That's regardless of any assessment around how dangerous the individual is ... There's huge issues around whether those conditions of imprisonment are compatible with human rights standards."
As Kamer was in his third straight week of solitary confinement, the story was already dropping out of the news in Australia. But in his hometown of Colombo, Sri Lanka, the protests were in full swing. His supporters marched in the streets with placards maintaining he had been framed and was being refused basic justice.
Release from prison
Four weeks after his arrest, Kamer appeared in a Sydney court to apply for bail.
Journalists filling up the media section of the court room thought the matter would be done in minutes — that it was unlikely a person accused of terrorism and being held in solitary would ever be granted bail.
Then there was a shocking revelation.
The prosecution said an expert had gone through the terror plans in Kamer's notebook and could not conclusively find it was his handwriting. Officers said they did thorough searches of Kamer's computers, phones, and belongings and couldn't find any links to extremism or Islamic State. His lawyer said the only evidence police were relying on was the notebook.
Kamer was released on bail.
"It was like the end of a bad dream... a very, very long and bad dream," he said. "Reuniting with my family that day was the happiest moment of my life."
His mum said the boy that stepped out of prison that day was completely different to the son she knew. "We were devastated because his eyes were sunken in. He was like a skeleton," she told Hack.
"He's a boy who used to go to the gym daily. My husband just couldn't take it. Kamer was in like a trance ... He was scared to meet people."
Three weeks after Kamer's release, in October 2018, police dropped the charges against Kamer. Despite his lawyer saying the police's actions were unforgivable, detectives maintained they did the right thing by charging Kamer.
Police refuse to apologise to Kamer
"These were very serious threats," NSW Police Counter Terrorism Assistant Commissioner Michael Willing told journalists the day officers dropped Kamer's charges. "We can never be complacent because the terrorist threat in Australia and NSW is very real."
Melanie Holt has been a forensic document examiner for 12 years and previously worked with the police, mainly on terror cases like Kamer's. She said the handwriting analysis of Kamer's notebook would be a lengthy process involving comparing old documents with the evidence. It would then have to be checked over by other document examiners.
"Something that big would take days," she told Hack.
"They'd be looking for indentations, they'd be looking for anything that's been removed that they need to investigate, it takes time."
"The police are always in a bit of a rock and a hard place," she said. "If they hold someone for too long and they're innocent, then that's looked upon poorly.
"But then again, if they release somebody and they go on to do something, that's tricky too."
A key element that prosecutors need to prove in terror cases in Australia is motive. Dr Vicki Sentas, who has researched these laws extensively, said being Muslim can be construed as a motive for terror, so Kamer's Islamic faith would have influenced police.
"It certainly seems to me that bringing charges against someone simply on this notebook does seem suspiciously thin and certainly this is a common experience for Muslim people who have been constructed as a suspicious community," she told Hack.
"It sounds huge alarm bells for me that Kamer was arrested in advance or without extensive surveillance which would have turned out nothing and certainly would have told police that he wasn't a person of interest."
Other academics have pointed to the case of Daniel Fing, a white Australian, who in 2014 was found with explosives and maps of targets in Sydney and Newcastle in his office desk but never charged with terror offences.
The prime minister at the time, Tony Abbott, said, "There are all sorts of people who do all sorts of weird and, at times, pretty dangerous things. But I haven't been advised of any potential terrorist threat in respect of this particular issue."
Journalists now had a new question to answer: If the handwriting in the yellow notebook didn't belong to Kamer, whose was it?
Kamer's colleague is accused of framing him
In early November 2018, Kamer flew back to Sri Lanka and was met by a huge support party. They draped flower necklaces around him as they sang and danced to welcome him home. He doesn't plan to return to Australia.
Back in Australia, the police investigation was nowhere near over. On December 4 2018, detectives revealed an unexpected twist in the case.
Kamer's colleague at UNSW's IT department, Arsalan Khawaja, was charged with writing the terror plans in the notebook. Officers say he never intended to carry out the plots but wanted to frame Kamer.
Arsalan Khawaja (centre) is seen at Parramatta Police Station in Sydney, Tuesday, December 4, 2018.
Khawaja, 41, is the brother of Australian cricket star Usman Khawaja. Arsalan was Kamer's 'scrum master' - a person who leads a team through a development project.
"I just knew him for a good five months or something since I joined this new project," Kamer said. "[It was in] a working capacity and nothing else, I never spent time with the guy outside of work."
Court documents seen by Hack show he called the police and the Immigration Department's Border Watch hotline to report Kamer and the plans before telling university officials.
"It's funny because the university directors themselves, they didn't look into it much further," Kamer said. "They just decided to call the cops despite me having been there for six and a half years at their university, having done things like working on a cybersecurity app working with the New South Wales Police as well."
Hack asked UNSW for an interview or a statement to put these claims to its administration, but did not receive a response.
Police again fronted journalists but maintained they did the right thing by arresting Kamer because of the threats in the notebook.
"What we will be alleging is that he was set up in a planned and calculated manner, motivated, in part, by a personal grievance," NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Mick Willing said to the media after arresting Arsalan. "We regret the circumstances which led to Mr Nizamdeen being charged and spending more than a month in jail."
Officers said Arsalan Khawaja was jealous of Kamer's professional work, his friendship with a girl and his popularity at university.
The woman at the centre of this, Shakeela Shahid, was 21 at the time of Kamer's arrest. She's told other publications that she was close to Kamer but they never dated. She says the ordeal has taken a heavy toll on her mental health. She was relentlessly questioned by police who picked over her private life and asked about the nature of her friendships with Kamer and Khawaja. She then suffered the additional shock of learning of Arsalan's duplicity — one of her friends had framed another.
Arsalan Khawaja's (right) relation to cricketer Usman (left) has brought more attention to his case.
Khawaja was released on bail, but just before the end of 2018, he was put back in jail after contacting a witness. A court heard Arsalan wrote a letter to a witness in the case saying, "I will get arrested and put in jail for a year if they knew I spoke to you".
Khawaja has been in jail ever since, and is waiting to be sentenced. In November last year, he pleaded guilty to framing Kamer, reporting him to the police and the Immigration Department, and contacting the witness.
"We were all just happy that, finally, this guy has been found out and that he would face justice for what he's done," Kamer said. "Because what he did was a very sick thing. Not only did he cost me mental agony, but my parents, my entire family, my loved ones, all of my friends... were just devastated by this and I just hope he gets what he deserves."
Arsalan Khawaja's family and Usman Khawaja's official media team have not responded to Hack's request for an interview or statement.
While Australia was playing Sri Lanka in cricket in February, 2019 Usman Khawaja admitted the whole ordeal was affecting his focus on the field.
"It's been tough ... it's something you don't expect to happen," he told reporters. "My family's very close to me and I'm very close to my family, so at some level I think it made it tougher to just go out and try to concentrate and execute my skills.. It has been very taxing mentally."
Kamer calls for an inquiry into the ordeal
Kamer Nizamdeen is now calling for an independent inquiry into his wrongful jailing, to ensure something similar doesn't happen again. He's also in the process of suing the police over the ordeal. This year he successfully sued One Nation MP Mark Latham for defamation over his tweets.
Kamer says his wrongful imprisonment was racially motivated.
Mohamed Kamer Nizamdeen has returned to his hometown of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
"I hope this never happens to anyone else and the authorities and governments ... don't buy into stereotypes and just shoot first ask and questions later," he said.
"Just give minorities and other immigrants a chance instead of just blacklisting them, based on a certain few black sheep."
Kamer now works at an IT company in Sri Lanka and says the event still haunts him. He wants the police, who have not apologised for his wrongful imprisonment, to change how they conduct terror cases in the future.
NSW Police and Australian Federal Police refused Hack's request for an interview or a statement, saying they cannot comment until all court proceedings have been concluded.
"I would just like to caution them on the way they do things," he said.
"Why would a person who wants to carry out those crimes, someone who wanted to blow up a building, why would you write that down in a notebook?"
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Student framed and imprisoned over terror offences tells whole story for the first time - ABC News
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